The bursting of the dotcom bubble has taken people's attention so far away from Internet happenings that new spyware, scumware, computer viruses and other Net varmints are secretly taking over people's computers without their knowledge or permission, pundits said yesterday.
Take the "terminally ill young girl" example. An e-mail purportedly from a young girl dying from cancer arrives in your e-mail box. It asks that you forward the message to as many people as possible since some company or charity will, in theory, donate money toward her treatment for every e-mail address tracked.
This kind of message could be a hoax meant to steal e-mail addresses for resale to marketers, said Chou Wang-tun (
"I don't directly forward e-mail to anyone, especially e-mail like this. They're used to collect valid e-mail addresses," Chou said.
He believes most people do not realize they are passing on e-mail addresses to marketers. E-mails of the "girl with cancer" type are designed to tug on a person's heartstrings and make them believe they can help a child a very great deal with a few simple mouse clicks.
Harvesters
Instead, marketing agencies harvest the e-mail addresses, then resell them at fat profits.
"E-mail is cheaper than real mail," Chou said. "Some companies sell 2,000 e-mail addresses for NT$200 to NT$300. It's easy to find e-mail addresses for sale on the Internet."
Another Web specialist, Russ McClay from the Taipei-based Pro QC Studios, said that as many as a million e-mail addresses can be purchased for just US$99, along with the software to help deliver so many messages at once. A single computer server cannot send so many e-mail messages at one time, so the extra software enables the user to take over additional servers -- from anywhere in the world -- to help deliver their advertisements.
The "girl-with-cancer" messages also may be sent simply as a prank, and not to collect e-mail addresses. The Web site Snopes2.com has tracked a number of different messages that have circumnavigated the Net since the mid-1990s.
But stealing e-mail addresses and setting pranks is small time compared to some of the ways companies have found to collect and use people's personal information. "Spyware" is the name given to software used to track and record every move a Net user makes without their knowledge, then targets certain advertisements to pop up on their computer screens as they surf the Web.
People who download and play MP3 music files should be especially wary of spyware. John DeRiso, a spokesman for anti-virus software maker Trend Micro Inc (
Even when he was not running the software, the attached spyware tracked his travels across the Web and sent ads in the form of pop-up windows to his computer. He said many of the advertisements were for casino Web sites.
Internet watchdog Langa.com, a site designed to keep Internet users abreast of such Net varmints, said one spyware culprit is VX2.com. The company makes a software that piggybacks on other software a user might choose to download.
"The VX2 spyware installs silently and then monitors your `clickstream' as you navigate around the web, sending information about your activities and your PC to the VX2 corporation. The VX2 site (http://www.vx2.cc) does not tell you which software is foisting the VX2 on you; it's hard to unravel it all," according to Langa.com.
One enthusiast blamed a lack of media attention for the growth of spyware and other varmints. In the days when high-flying stock prices grabbed headlines, people learning how to use the Internet were more well informed about what to do and watch out for. Now, although the number of Internet users has grown, the number of news stories in traditional media has shrunk.
Pundits also say laws and regulations have yet to catch up with the Internet, leaving far too many loopholes for unscrupulous companies and individuals.
Meanwhile, anti-virus software developers such as Trend Micro, Norton, Semantec and McAfee are capitalizing on the publics' vulnerability by creating software packages that can help to protect users from being spied upon or having information collected from their computer systems without permission.
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